I bought the Canon S820 last week, and have been mightily pleased with it. I had purchased an Olympus digital camera recently and thus qualified for the $75 rebate on select Epson photo printers, but after reading so many clogging trouble postings on it, I figured it wasn't worth the hassle, $75 rebate notwithstanding.

The S820 uses 6 individual ink cartridges, and I am getting excellent results with the Canon Photo Paper Pro. I bought both the 15-sheet 8.5"x11" pack and the 20-sheet 4"x6" perforated packs for approx. $12 each, and they both work well, but in the future I think I'll stick just with the 8.5x12 packs as I can fit three 4x6" prints per page.

If you want the pictures to last a long time, then you should look into the availability of archival quality inks for the printer. This, good paper and a UV A/B filtering frame will keep a picture good for many years.

It might cost more, but you might consider a printer where the print head is in the cartridge. This might raise the cost of the cartridges (don't know how much) but it does mean that you start with a fresh head every time (or not, if you refill. But at least it's in your control!)

You will want a separate black cartridge instead of mixing the other colors to get it. But I bet that only really cheap printers do this any more.

die-sub printers are very nice and can produce amazing quality in general. But they have their downsides. I would read about them before you consider them. I've heard about them costing less than $300. I didn't know they were that cheap.... I haven't paid attention to them in years.

Epson does make some *very* good printers for photographic printing. The 2200 is a very nice printer. I know many pros that use it, and sell the results. It will cost you $700 &amp; B&amp;H, though. Steve did a review of this printer at:

I've read about some head cloging issues with Epson as well, but it seemed mostly related to using after market ink cartridges and refilling cartridges with after market inks. Maybe it's worse than that? I don't know.

I was given an HP deskjet 722C which is good but not great. So I can't talk from personal experience with about Epson. But I've heard a lot of second hand goodness about them.

If you want 4X6 prints, then the HiTi 630pl/ps is the printer for you. It will only print at 4X6 but the prints are lab quality. www.hitouchimaging.com for more information. You can also check Steve's reviews.

For largish numbers of 4x6", 5x7", or 8x10" prints, going to Wal*Mart, Costco, or whoever in your area prints from digital is a good way to go. The price is less than the cost of paper and ink, not counting the cost of the printer itself. Do your first printing that way, get a feel for how many you want to print, and how much you want to spend. You might not need a photo printer at all.

You could be getting a bit ahead of yourself asking about a printer since you haven't yet asked about a photo editor. However you print your pictures, you are going to want to edit them - at least to crop them and bringing up the color in shots that need it.